Project: Makeover

by Cindy Savage

When Laura tries to impress Eric Jefferson by helping Tuyen Thanh Thai, a shy Vietnamese girl, become more popular, her plan backfires

Genres: Middle Grade

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Nora]

The nicest thing that you can say is that this novel has not aged well. Six Vietnamese refugee families are moving to the main character Laura’s town, and she decides to volunteer to welcome the teenagers, in order to get closer to a boy she likes who is also volunteering. The cringey story covers whether all Asian people are good at math, whether they all look alike, whether they are going to eat dogs, whether you should peer pressure your new refugee friends into wearing different clothes, etc. I bet this author’s other books that were not hamfistedly intended to promote diversity and inclusion are more fun and less tone deaf, so maybe check them out instead. Another book on this same topic but from a preteen boy’s POV that I remember as being better is Hello, My Name Is Scrambled Eggs by Jamie Gilson.